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Employer Attractiveness and Employee Performance: An Exploratory Study
Employer Attractiveness and Employee Performance: An Exploratory Study
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1. Introduction
In addition to market size and customer loyalty (Khoa at el., 2020), business success
is also measured by corporate management's success, especially in human resource
management. Employee performance, how an employee performs their tasks, is
measured by comparing the task performance to job requirements including the
actual performance (leadership, time management, labour productivity) (Betaubun
et al., 2015). In other words, employee performance is the value chain of the
employee's contribution to the organisation's goal, regardless of whether the
contribution is positive or negative (Harwiki, 2016; Nguyen & Khoa, 2020).
According to Sok and O'Cass (2011), employee's contributions are quantified to
comprise other relevant factors. That employee performance is defined as the
organisation's ability to perform the skills (quality, efficiency and other related
factors at work). It is an especially important and necessary factor because of each
employee's ability to task performance (Masakure, 2016). In the more detailed
approach, Welbourne et al. (1998) assumed that employee performance depends on
the five key employee roles: job, career, innovator, team and organisation; in which:
job refers to job implementation description for each individual, career refers to the
skill implementation essential in organisational progress, innovator refers to work
creativity and innovation, the team demonstrates working ability among other
colleagues and team members to achieve the company's success, organisation
implies how the employee cares about the organisation's goals. Besides, Nguyen
and Ngo (2020) also discovered the positive impact of psychological capital on
employees' work performance. Moreover, Nguyen et al. (2019) also studied the
impact of job crafting on work engagement and work performance.
Unlike employee performance, employer attractiveness is differently defined as
follows. First, employer branding is marketing-like branding for a product or
company (Ambler & Barrow, 1996) or a communication form (Bergstrom et al.,
2002) or management process (Gatewood et al., 1993) or psychology (Jurgensen,
1978; Collin & Steven, 2002) or about employee behaviour (Soutar & Clarke, 1983).
The current widely accepted and used concept is developed by Berthon et al. (2005):
Employer attractiveness, the benefits of an organisation perceived by potential
candidates as the best place to work, includes five dimensions: interesting value,
economic value, social value, developmental value and application value. Following
the definition of Berthon et al. (2005), employer attractiveness has also been
extended to the existing employee object. Employer attractiveness is the perceived
level of both potential employees and current employees about the organisation's
competitive advantages; in which, the organisation is seen as the best place to work.
It will create a long-term and sustainable competitive advantage for enterprises
(Jiang & lle, 2011). Employer attractiveness is divided into Internal employer
attractiveness as the extent to which current employees feel attracted to the
organisation they are working for whereas External employer attractiveness shows
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how attractive the organisation is to potential candidates (Pingle & Sharma, 2013).
In terms of the research stream of the employer attractiveness, employer
attractiveness focuses on a potential employee, rather than the current employee.
Some studies on the impact of employer attractiveness on potential candidates'
applying intentions are listed as Sivertzen et al., 2013; Ha & Luan, 2018). Besides,
the effect of employer attractiveness is studied on organisational satisfaction and
identity (Bodderas et al., 2011). The completely different study is performed on
understanding the branding factors of employers in SMEs (Tumasjan et al., 2011).
The number of studies on the effect of employer attractiveness on current
employees is very limited. Therefore, this study aimed to explore in-depth to clarify
the impact of employer attractiveness on employee performance.
2. Literature Review
The person - organisation fit theory, developed by Kristof (1996), deals with
antecedents and consequences for the organisation and the organisational
individuals. This theory affirms that: to achieve a high level of person - organisation
fit through recruitment and socialisation maintains a flexible condition in the
organisation's difficult situations. This theory aims to clarify and distinguish
between supplementary and complementary fit. The supplementary fit occurs when
a person has 'supplements, embellishes, or possesses characteristics' or other
characteristics similar to another individual in the working environment. This is
different from the complementary fit; a person's personality is 'made whole' on the
environment (Muchinsky & Monahan, 1987). In another explanation, the person-
organisation fit is provided from needs-supplies and demands-abilities (Edwards,
1991). If the analysis from the needs-supplies perspective, the person-organisation
fit will occur when the organisation satisfies the individual's needs and expectations.
On the contrary, the person-organisation fit will occur from the demand-abilities
direction when an individual meets its working capacity requirements.
Employer branding theory is based on the combination of marketing principles
and human management. This concept is seen as the package of both economic and
psychological benefits provided to employees from their organisations (Ambler &
Barrow, 1996). Wally (1989) identifies that employer brand is the first way to create
an organisation's organisational culture and inner spirit in the previous different
approach. These results increase the motivation of the entire organisation to connect
with the employee. Besides, the organisation's reputation will be created for all
stakeholders (Hlavsa et al., 2015). Another foundation of the employer branding
theory is the psychological contract theory that deals with the relationship between
the organisation and employees. According to Hendry and Jenkins (1997), the
psychological contract concept between employees and companies in the traditional
view is the exchange of benefits between the two sides. Accordingly, the employee
will commit to being loyal to the company in return for job safety. However, the
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Social
value
Teamwork
Developmental
value
Employer H1 Employee
Application Innovator
Attractiveness Performance
value
Safety
value
Job
Economic
value
Fig. 1:Figure
The1. The research model
research model.
4. Research Methodology
This research used was a mixed method of qualitative research and quantitative
research. Firstly, the scale adjustment and development is conducted by qualitative
research method. Next, to evaluate the scale's reliability, validity and test research
hypotheses, this study used quantitative research methods. The data collection
methods were used in qualitative research, including expert interviews and focus
group discussion. The expert interview was conducted with four lecturers with a
deep understanding of marketing and human resource management. At the same
time, these professionals also have much experience in corporate management
activities. In focus group discussions, the participants will include employees who
have worked for at least five years to understand the company's employer branding
activities to contribute opinion about the survey questionnaire scales. For the
quantitative research method, the study uses SPPS and PLS-SEM software.
Analytical phases assess the measurement model and the structural model. Data
collection is performed through the survey questionnaires sent directly to the
respondents. After being answered and collected from the respondents, the survey
data will be screened and reviewed to choose which questionnaires meet the
research requirements. The number of respondents who answered the research
satisfactory was 937 people from 37 enterprises and Vietnam organisations. Table 1
shows the demographic information of the sample.
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5. Data Analysis
5.1. Scale reliability and validity
This research tested the reliability of employer attractiveness, employee
performance scale measurement through Cronbach's Alpha (CA). Simultaneously,
the internal consistency standard of these scales is tested by exploring factor
analysis (EFA). In table 2, all scales met the analytical criteria as follows:
Cronbach's Alpha of all constructs of employer attractiveness and employee
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performance were greater than 0.8. Based on this result, all items will be kept in
these two scales. The KMO values of employer attractiveness and employee
performance were 0.948 and 0.931, respectively. Besides, the significant in
Bartlett's test of these scales have a value of 0.000 (< 0.05), proving that these
scales meet the standard of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) (Hair et al., 2017). For
Total Variance Explained index of the employer attractiveness and employee
performance scales, the values of 71.583% and 65.385% are respectively greater
than 50% as prescribed. Therefore, this criterion of both scales is satisfactory
(Gerbing and Anderson, 1988). The eigenvalue of the employer attractiveness
concept (hereafter EA) was 1.024, which showed that the factors include social
value (hereafter SOC), developmental value (hereafter DEV), application value
(hereafter APP), safety value (hereafter SAF) and economic value (hereafter ECO).
The eigenvalue of employee performance concept (hereafter EP) was 1.233, which
shows that the factors on this scale, including teamwork (hereafter TEA), innovator
(hereafter INO) and job (hereafter JOB). That both of these eigenvalue values were
greater than 1.0; hence, the scale meets the standard (Gerbing and Anderson, 1988).
Moreover, two scales have a Composite Reliability (CR) value of greater than
0.70 and an Average Variance Extracted (AVE) value greater than 0.50, and all the
employer attractiveness items' outer loading values have a value from 0.688 to
0.913 as well as employee performance has a value from 0.706 to 0.906, each with a
value greater than 0.708 (Hair et al.,2016). The criteria prove that both scales meet
convergent validity.
Table 2: Results of scale reliability and convergent validity
Explore Factor Analysis (EFA)
Bartlett's
Constructs CA Eigen CR AVE
KMO Test of Cumulative %
values
Sphericity
Employer attractiveness (Outer loading: 0,688 – 0,913)
SOC 0.911 0.931 0.694
DEV 0.902 0.925 0.674
APP 0.832 0.948 0.000 71.583% 1.024 0.889 0.666
SAF 0.844 0.906 0.764
ECO 0.849 0.908 0.767
Employee performance (Outer loading: 0,706 – 0,906)
TEA 0.902 0.921 0.594
INO 0.898 0.931 0.000 65.385% 1.233 0.921 0.663
JOB 0.847 0.909 0.768
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The study examines the discriminant value among the latent variables of
employee performance. Table 4 shows the HTMT for all pairs of variables studied
in a matrix means that all values of HTMT are much smaller than 0.85. The low and
high limit of the 95% confidence interval (the difference between the calibration
and cumulative) of all groups of research variables does not contain 1.0. These
values assert that employee performance scales achieve discriminant validity.
Table 4: HTMT of Employee performance
TEA INO JOB Beta Bias 2.5% 97.5%
TEA EPàTEA 0.907 -0.001 0.89 0.921
INO 0.712 EPàINO 0.873 0.000 0.852 0.891
JOB 0.650 0.649 EPàJOB 0.757 -0.001 0.721 0.787
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When PLS-SEM exhibits the predictive relevance, data that is not used in model
estimation can be correctly predicted. Regarding evaluation criteria, with the
structural model, the value Q2 is greater than 0 for a specific endogenous latent
variable, indicating the path model's predictive relationship for this particular
dependent variable. From Table 6, the value Q2 of endogenous variables is greater
than 0 through blindfolding result. That employee performance has the value of Q 2
of 0.049 suggests that the model's predictive relevance to endogenous latent
variables is possible.
Table 7 described the relationship between the research variables and research
hypothesis test. That employer attractiveness has a medium positive impact on
employee performance (β = 0.321) with 99% confidence implies that the hypothesis
is supported. Figure 2 pointed out the relationship between the concepts and
constructs in the research.
Table 7. Hypothesis testing result
O M STDEV |O/STDEV| P Values Comment
EA -> EP 0.321 0.324 0.033 9.575 0.000 Supported
Note: Original Sample (O), Sample Mean (M), Standard Deviation (STDEV), T Statistics (|O/STDEV|)
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6. Discussion
That employer attractiveness positively impacts employee performance with impact
coefficient ß= 0.321 (significance level p-value = 0.000) means that hypothesis H2
is supported. This result helps to add a new research direction of employer
attractiveness because previous studies mainly focus on attracting potential
candidates, especially on candidate recruitment' impact on work efficiency.
Specifically, the previous employer attractiveness researchers pay more attention to
potentially potential candidates (Sivertzen et al.; 2013 and Ha & Luan, 2018) or
employer attractiveness scale (Berthon et al., 2005). Therefore, the relationship
between employer attractiveness and employee performance is affirmed in a new
direction.
Theoretically, this result is consistent with the theory concerned. According to
person-organisation (PO) fit theory (Kristof, 1996), there is harmony between the
company and the employee by providing each other with the benefits and values
that each side wishes to receive. The company will also provide employees with
financial values (economy, physical and psychology as safety or opportunities like
development and application). In contrast, employees will provide the company
with their performance. The optimal relevance is that both satisfy both needs
through the values mentioned above. Therefore, the positive relationship between
employer attractiveness and employee performance is completely consistent with
Person-Organization (PO) fit theory.
Compared to previous studies, this is a new research direction, so not many
studies on this relationship for reference. The first study of Dabirian et al. (2019),
analysing 15,000 IT employee reviews, identified eight values for IT employee
evaluation to propose appropriate solutions for IT, company leaders, to use the
employer brand effectively to attract and retain talent for improving human resource
competitiveness or increasing the efficiency of employees. In another study, Slatten
et al.(2019) found the role of organisational attractiveness as the powerful frontline
in employees' perception of their internal market-oriented culture and turnover rate,
engagement and service quality in hospitals; in which, organisational attractiveness
has a positive impact on the service quality of nurses provided to patients. This
research result is quite similar to that of Slatten et al. (2019). Pires (2020) studied
Employer attractiveness and its impact on individual work performance moderated
by national culture in multinational companies. With regression models, employer
attractiveness dimensions (economic and application value) with a positive
relationship with employee performance. To sum up, the results of the positive
relationship between employer attractiveness and employee performance are rather
relevant.
Practically, the positive effect of employer attractiveness on employee
performance is relevant in practice. Firstly, factors related to the social work
environment (supportive relationship, the collaboration between colleagues, the
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Therefore, further research can develop more precise and general data collection
methods (using probability data collection method). Besides, study subjects can
expand to non-business organisations (socio-political organisations, culture,
journalism, education, non-government). For the geographical factor, it is possible
to survey more broadly organisations in the Central and Northern regions of
Vietnam for the more general research results. The study time may add some
different times to compare and evaluate the change in employee's perception of
employer attractiveness. Future studies may also expand some intermediate
variables or moderator variables in the relationship between employer attractiveness
and employee performance in terms of the research model. Besides the employee
performance, the next research may discover other dimensions (employee
satisfaction, commitment or loyalty) that employer attractiveness can impact.
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